CONSORT Guidelines

Select a journal for submission
Each journal has a unique scope of interest and will only publish articles that fall within their selection criteria. English-language journals that are indexed by theNational Institute’s of Health PubMed online database are more accessible to researchers the world over and increases the readership of the article. As well, journals with impact factors should be considered over those that do not as this rating is linked with the frequency of articles cited.

Step-by-step writing guide
Three different guides have been developed in respect of the three main categories of journal articles. Determine which type is the most appropriate and acquire the Instructions for Authors either from the journal’s online site or within an issue of the journal itself. Note, that there may be additional categories of article types with specific instructions beyond those presented here. (Schriger DL, Arora S, Altman DG. The content of medical journal Instructions for authors. Ann Emerg Med. 2006 Dec;48(6):743-9, 749.e1-4.)

The Flow Diagram
The flow diagram is intended to depict the passage of participants through an RCT. The revised flow diagram depicts information from four stages of a trial (enrollment, intervention allocation, follow-up, and analysis).

The diagram explicitly shows the number of participants, for each intervention group, included in the primary data analysis. Inclusion of these numbers allows the reader to judge whether the authors have done an intention-to-treat analysis.

Templates of the CONSORT 2010 flow diagram are available to download in MS Word and in PDF.